Mike Leigh’s revitalised production of The Pirates of Penzance at the English National Opera’s Coliseum is a fun, but ultimately unsatisfying testament to the enduring charm of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1879 comic opera.
At its heart, The Pirates of Penzance is a parody of Victorian propriety, poking fun at the rigid class structures and moral contradictions of the era. The operetta’s premise hinges on a delicious absurdity: Frederic, a young man bound to a pirate crew by an apprenticeship, discovers that his contract stipulates he must serve not until his 21st birthday but until his 21st year—a farcical twist when it’s revealed he was born on a Leap Day, and so is only five years old when his 21 years’ expires.
Three of the cast shone; James Creswell as the Police Sergeant delivered a brilliant comic performance, with a deep baritone voice you wanted to die in. Richard Stuart as Major General Stanley delivered the classic ‘I am the Modern Major General’ with aplomb and elegant diction, although the presence of subtitles above the stage helps with following those rapid fire lyrcis. Isabel Peters shone as Mabel, with the famous aria ‘Poor Wandering One’ performed beautifully. The rest of the cast were good enough; but this was far from a production where every actor overdelivers and leaves the audience reeling in delight at the cast’s talent and charisma.

The scenery, designed by Alison Chitty, is a series of brightly coloured geometrical shapes in the background, which all seemed a bit pointless. There’s a clever ship’s bow coming off the wings at the beginning, but that’s it. This is a show that relies entirely on the brilliant talents of Gilbert & Sullivan, the first-rate orchestra, and the mostly quite good skills of the cast. But there’s little scenery; little lighting (in fact, there was a broken fluorescent light in the second half, flickering on and off during one of the songs), and the sound quality is poor. Whilst the Coliseum is designed with natural acoustics in mind, it was far from clear whether there was any electrical amplification. We sat in the middle of the stalls, and it was hard to make out much of the spoken words and the lyrics. The subtitles were a lifesaver, and that shouldn’t be the case.
Pirates of Penzance is not revived frequently enough (and when it is, it tends to be at local theatres). This production, which itself is a revival of the Coliseum’s identical production in 2015, cannot spoil a first-rate score and book written by two geniuses 150 years ago. But it doesn’t add much, either.